Parental Advisory

My heart is heavy for the next generation of children.. I am not a biological parent yet, however, I do care for my step son as my own – and I have a responsibility to produce an atmosphere around him that will help his well-being, and ultimately help him to be responsible adult. I’ve grown to learn that infants and toddlers are very impressionable (emphasis on very). Children almost mimic what they are subliminally subjected to in their household… meaning they are subjected to their parents:

Mannerisms (eye rolling, gossip…)

Attitudes (nagging, complaining…)

Behavior patterns (smoking, drinking…)

What prompted this blog was a very disturbing FB video post of a pregnant woman, about 4-6 months, twerking. (By urban dictionary twerking is: The rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual arousal or laughter in ones intended audience.) So the young woman was shaking her butt, doing splits hunching the ground, rolling over on her stomach grinding the ground. The woman was allowing dollar bills to be thrown at her from the crowd of onlooking adults.

And I nearly burst out in tears of sadness, empathy and sorrow watching the video. I had one of those “father forgive them, they do not know what they do” responses and remorse for her. I have a very, very soft spot for children – child abuse in particular. And in my heart and my first thought of the video was how irresponsible of the woman, first, to allow by her own actions danger on the unborn child. As she was grinding on the floor, the baby bump was hitting the floor very hard, endangering the childs natural development! The reality is that the woman wanted to be seen by the party goers – the woman only cared about herself, selfishly, and not being a responsible mother to be! Then, secondly, allowing her child in that type of atmosphere was heartbreaking.

As moms, as a parents, we should not take this role lightly! We are our child’s FIRST teacher! God has entrusted us uniquely for that child’s well-being! God assigned each parent a responsibility to train up the next generations Christians! But we do what we want to with them, and subject them (open them up) to the enemy early – and we don’t even realize we are doing it! Sadly, when they grow up we don’t want to be responsible for the child’s behavior and make excuses for themselves – “I don’t know where he got that from!”

We always say we want our children to be better than us, but it’s just more than saying it. It is actually taking our part seriously and changing OUR behavior so they can reflect it, when they are with us and when they are without us.

Proverbs 22:6 (VOICE) “Teach a child how to follow the right way; even when he is old, he will stay on course.

I like this version because it instructs us to teach the child how to. It doesn’t just say “tell them” but it orders us parents the obligation to show our children how to follow the right way! We have an obligation to show them that when life is hard – and when obstacles continue – to still stay on the right track through righteous actions! We have to have a household that is nurturing to them, teach them how to pray, teach them right from wrong early – so as they get more involved with the public growing up (school, sports, friends.. etc) they will still have their teachings (doings) implanted and sewn in them.

I like to share a visual with you. When a child is born, the head (cranium skull) of a child is not fully developed. It’s soft, so parents are extra careful not to do anything that would hurt the child in that way. As they get older, the skull hardens more, and becomes less tender. So imagine this in our child’s life…. When they are young, they are more tender minded than when they get older. Their learning starts to harden as they age (this is why older people are ‘stuck in their ways’ and less able to learn ). So while our children are young, we have to teach them good behavior, through actions and words, and seal their life through constant prayer and they travel through life and get older.

I’d rather be a parent that addresses and develops good behavior patterns – so the world doesn’t have to deal with it later. I have dealt with someone’s behavior that was learned a long time ago – everyone has! Not to fault our moms or our dads, grandma’s and grandad’s – but they didn’t know as they were handling the household, they were also teaching us behavior. We have to be a generation, now, that is conscious of what we do – especially around our impressionable children. We are growing them up to be disrespectful, unkind, selfish, unloving – without recognizing we, ourselves, are being just that.